EDUCATOR
Teaching, designing lesson plans, working with students, and producing public programs has a lot in common with making media. There’s no better way to learn a thing than by telling a story about it.
As a part of a National Science Foundation grant, I developed and taught a STEM science communication course at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, which provided graduate students with tools to turn research into visual media. At New York University, I guest lectured about how to make science videos at a Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting class.
I produced a Museum of the Moving Image public program about the science of monster movies, a live variety show with scientists and filmmakers telling stories about Jurassic Park, Alien, the cult B-movie Slugs, and Jaws.
Also, I was a National Park ranger at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge along the coast in Queens, New York. I developed lesson plans, made educational materials, and led classes about urban ecology and climate change for NYC school kids. I worked closely with park non-profit partners like the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, too.
For National Geographic Student Expeditions, I taught high schoolers nature photography in Yellowstone National Park. And I worked with grade school kids at a housing development in East New York, Brooklyn to help them photograph scenes of their neighborhood.
Talking horseshoe crabs during a class on coastal creatures. (JBRPC)
That’s me with a Eurasian Eagle-owl during a Junior Ranger program about birds. 
We cleared 500 pounds of trash that day. (JBRPC)I made this National Park Service video to prepare students for a phenology class I taught at the wildlife refuge.
